Foreign Minister participates in Quartet meeting

December 16, 2008

Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said during a meeting of the Quartet last night that the Middle East peace process has not yielded tangible results this year.

"We must recognize the fact that peace will not be attained through holding fruitless meetings and negotiations while ignoring the core of the conflict," he said at UN headquarters in New York. "We are discussing the same points we have been discussing for a long time and we are reaching the same outcomes we reached before."

Prince Saud noted that Israel has been proceeding with its policy of settlement-building in East Jerusalem, making it difficult for the Palestinian government to convince its people of the benefits of peace.

Prince Saud stressed the importance of taking advantage of the current transitional period to pave the way for serious actions aimed at reaching peace. A lack of success in the peace process, he warned, will only increase the attractiveness of extremist ideologies.